


I Belong To Tomorrow

by Masterofceremonies



Category: Original Work
Genre: Antisemitism, Death, Historical, Holocaust, Homophobia, Nazis, Racism, Violence, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 19:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterofceremonies/pseuds/Masterofceremonies
Summary: Alrik Brandt has always been a patriot. Unquestioningly so. That makes him a very good soldier. Does it make him a good man?





	

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been rattling around in my head for a while so I decided to write it down. I tried to be a realistic as possible without using an actual person because I have no sympathy for Nazis and you shouldn't either. Probably shouldn't have sympathy for Alrik even though he's fake tbh.

Alrik Brandt had always been a patriot. He had stomped and shouted alongside other proud Germans in 1934 when Hitler became the Führer of Germany. The same day he turned 18. The same day he joined the Third Reich. Four years later, he served his country well during “Reichskristallnacht”.  _ The Night of Broken Glass _ , according to the British papers. 

“Es ist ein Wortspiel [ [1] ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839?view_adult=true#_ftn1) .” One of the other Sturmabteilung pointed out. “The Jews own all the gold in Europe, why not the crystal too?”

“Es ist kein Wortspiel, es ist Wortschöpfung. [ [2] ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839?view_adult=true#_ftn2) ” Someone else countered, using the blade of their knife to pick rocks out from the treads of their boots. Alrik frowned, both at the meaningless debate and the misuse of weaponry.

“Uw mes zal nutteloos zijn als u doorgaat om dat te doen. [ [3] ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839?view_adult=true#_ftn3) ” Alrik didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard, despite the usual noisy existence of his fellow soldiers. One of the benefits of staying quiet most of the time was that when he did speak, people listened. Rarity, to most people, signified importance. It was something his mother had taught him. “Speak too often and your words become flakes of coal.” She advised, golden hair gleaming in the light as she stoked the fire. “Save your words. Give them time, and thought. In the pressure of your mind, they will turn to diamonds.” Alrik remembered her cupping his face in her hands, a smudge of ash from her fingertips marring his cheek. “And if they don’t, you will at least fool others into thinking so.” 

His eyes refocused on the men in front of him. “Besides,” he paused, making sure he had their  _ full _ attention, “it does not matter what kind of word it is. People know what it means. We made sure of that ourselves.” The others nodded in agreement.

The name fit, that much was certain, and if it was just a pun, who was he to say? He wasn’t a comic, he was a soldier, and he took pride in that fact. He reveled in following orders, serving the fatherland. The moment the telegram had come through, the moment he was given the chance to do more than just patrol the streets or march in parades, he had leapt at it like a starving dog presented with bloodied meat. 

Kristallnacht, in fact, sounded a bit lackluster to him. It failed to convey the true spirit of the night, the true glory. Standing beneath the clear night sky, his lungs filled with crisp air tinged with cloying smoke, Alrik felt like a god. His veins hummed with sound of shattering windows and the crunching thud of boots on pavement, noises that sounded more beautiful than any music he’d heard before. 

Unfortunately he had barely enlisted when the Röhm Putsch took place. Long Knives sounded much more exciting than Broken Glass, and he regretted not having been able to take part in the purification of the higher ranks. He knew this pale regret was nothing worthy of vocation. Not when he’d witnessed, with his own two eyes, history being made. For the rest of his days, Alrik would hold within him the knowledge that he’d been there, leading the charge.

He was determined to make up for the missed opportunity, nevertheless.  He prayed for another chance to prove himself. God must have heard his prayers because a year later, Germany was at war. Alrik marched off to the front lines without hesitation, the cheering crowds that saw him off echoing through his mind loud enough to drown out cannon fire. Warsaw, Holland, Norway, France, each falling before the Third Reich. Some were crushed, others fell softly, requiring no more than a few gentle promises and the looming threat of war. His loyalty was recognized and rewarded, his commanding officers heaping praise upon him for bravery in combat, and by 1942 he had climbed the ranks enough to earn a spot at the Wannsee Conference.

He was there to sit in his uniform, a representative of the 13 million other men fighting to make Germany great again. He was attending as an admiral’s aide, on an official basis at least, and he was told, quite plainly, that he wasn’t to speak. His role was that of a silent observer, granted the privilege of seeing the Führer up close and hearing him speak in person, but nothing more.

Alrik had no qualms about this. He was used to biting his tongue, following orders, keeping his mouth shut, and not making trouble. He was a good soldier, after all, and that was exactly why he had been allowed to attend the conference in the first place. So he remained silent on the truck that drove him from Poland to Berlin, silent as he was introduced to the admiral, silent as he was shown his room. The hotel they stayed in was luxurious by any standards, especially for a soldier returning from the front. They would spend the night, rise early the next day, and take the admiral’s private car to the conference.

It is there that he learned of the final solution.

At first he was confused. Certainly they couldn’t have been discussing such things so cavalierly. There had to be some sort of joke, or a misunderstanding… the Jews needed to be dealt with, yes, but the things the SS were proposing, the things they claimed were already being done…

Alrik listened with a stonily blank face, taking in the details of Heydrich’s plan with a careful attentiveness that could only be read as loyalty. When he was dismissed from the conference he telephoned an officer who owed him a favor and requested a tour of Auschwitz, a work camp he had sent men, women, and children to, but never seen for himself. He then informed the admiral that he would not be spending his leave in Berlin. The admiral was preoccupied with his own plans, and took little note of the loyal, focused, slightly boring soldier. 

He needed to see. Needed to know. Deserved to know.

Didn’t he?

After eight years of service, shouldn’t he at least know what he’s fighting for?

As his car approached Auschwitz, he thought he smelled copper, then charcoal, wisps of musky and sweet perfume underneath leather being tanned over a flame. Had the gates read “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate” he would not have batted an eye, but as they came into view, the wrought iron merely spelled out “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” [ [4] ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839?view_adult=true#_ftn4) and nothing more. With every passing moment, the scent of what he thought was sulfur permeated the air more and more thickly, until Alrik became convinced he was driving into the mouth of hell.

Everything he saw from then on only served to prove him right.

If his face went pale, no one noticed. If his hands shook, he hid it well. If the sight of men pushing their loved ones’ corpses into ovens disturbed him, he never said so. He never flinched. Never averted his gaze. Not for a moment.

The tour was extensive and thorough. As meticulous as the man who requested it. Alrik’s apparent curiosity towards the way it was run was interpreted as enthusiasm by his host, and by the time the officer had to return to his duties, Alrik had seen every inch of the camp. He knew the daily procedures, how the prisoners were treated, the numbering system used to keep track of them, and what the color coded symbols on their chests identified them as. He had seen incoming transports of men and women stripped, shaved, hosed down, and tattooed. He had watched others led into chambers under the guise of taking showers. He had stood by, silently, as the door was sealed and chemicals poured down a tube, filling the room with gas and suffocating those inside.

Ever the obedient soldier. Ever the quiet type.

Words, like flakes of coal, felt heavy on his tongue. At this point, Alrik was uncertain if he imagined the ash in his mouth, or if 

After all this, he thanked the officer for his time, saluted him properly, and got back in his car, where his driver was waiting for him. They drove back to the hotel where they were staying. Alrik dismissed his driver for the night, informing him that he was free to do as he pleased until tomorrow afternoon, when they needed to board their train back to Berlin. His driver saluted him crisply, and left. If Alrik wasn’t mistaken, the driver would head to the nearest bar and drink so heavily he wouldn’t wake until their train was long gone.

Once in his room, alone for the first time that day, Alrik removed his uniform and carefully packed it away in his suitcase. He changed into civilian attire, clothes he hadn’t worn in some time, but kept with him just in case. Alrik was a careful man. He always had been.

The only things he traveled with, the only things he really owned, were his uniform, his formal wear, his pistol and ceremonial dagger, and the long black trench coat that had become fashionable among SS officers. They all fit into one suitcase quite easily. Besides that, he carried a leather attaché case. When he had been on the front lines he had left it with a trusted friend in Berlin, but the moment he returned he had repossessed it. It contained all the money he had ever earned in neatly stacked bills, tied off in tidy bundles. 

His father had started keeping all his money in a safe at home after the depression hit. Alrik had been too young to understand what was really going on, but the sight of people carting wheelbarrows of money from place to place had stuck with him, and the distrust of banks instilled in him from that tender age had only grown stronger over the years. He had assumed that once the Jews were taken care of and the Third Reich reigned supreme, the banks would be German owned, and more specifically, controlled by the National Socialist party. He had planned to deposit his money on that day, and that day only.

It seemed his father’s paranoia, passed onto him, had some use after all.

With his suitcase in one hand, attaché in the other, he left his hotel room and walked out through the lobby, no one’s attention on him without his uniform to draw it there. The lack of stares and whispers felt foreign, and Alrik had to remind himself not to salute when he passed by a uniformed officer in the street. Outside, he hailed a cab, placing his suitcase in the trunk and keeping the attaché case by his side. Alrik didn’t intend to let it out of his sight in the foreseeable future. He told the driver to head out of town. When he didn’t provide a specific address, the driver hesitated, but Alrik handed him enough money to ensure his concerns were never voiced.

After an hour or so, the lights of the city flickering on just in time to fade in the rear view mirror, the driver asked where he wanted to go. Alrik didn’t reply at first, not entirely sure of the answer himself.

“I’m sick of the city and I want somewhere to go where I can be alone.” He finally decided. “Completely and entirely alone with no chance of intruders.”

The taxi driver nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the road, worry fixed on his face. “I don’t know of anywhere like that.” The driver shrugged. “I do know of a small town where I can take you.” He glanced in the mirror. “But that is as far as I will go.”

Alrik nodded in agreement and that was the last time either of them spoke.

 

[[1]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839#_ftnref1) It is a pun.

[[2]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839#_ftnref2) It is not a pun, it is a neologism.

[[3]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839#_ftnref3) Your knife will be useless if you continue to do that.

[[4]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9622193/chapters/21738839#_ftnref4) Work makes you free.

 


End file.
